Look to the insect …: For years, insect-like robots were graceless shufflers, easily outclassed by the common cockroach. Big changes are afoot

By KURT KLEINER

IN AUGUST an 800-kilogram robot called Dante picked its way into the crater
of Mount Spurr, an active volcano in southern Alaska. The crater was too
dangerous for humans to enter, and the terrain too rough for a wheeled vehicle
to negotiate. So Dante was fitted with eight legs. It walked around for a
couple of days, collecting air samples and transmitting video images back to
its human controllers, before it lost its footing and tumbled to the bottom of
the crater. Despite Dante’s last-minute stumble, the mission showed that
legged robots can work in places where even a Range Rover would not dare
venture.

For the past 20 years or more, researchers have been tinkering with similar
creations, inspired by the simple observation that legs work pretty well for
animals in rough terrain. Legged robots have been used to clean up nuclear
power plants, and are being considered for jobs as routine as maintaining
pipelines and as adventurous as exploring the surface of Mars. Like Dante,
many of these robots are bug-shaped – with plenty of legs to stand on they are
less likely to fall over. But previous generations of walking robots have not
been particularly graceful movers. Compared with the average cockroach,
walking robots have been a bunch of pitiful shufflers.

Now robot builders are going a step further. They are learning from the way
insects control their leg movements, and programming their robots to mimic
these mechanisms. Preliminary results are impressive, and a little eerie.
Rather than clunking along mechanically, the latest insect-like robots are
almost lifelike: they probe ahead with a leg to …

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